Based on Shenandoah Chefalo’s memoir, Garbage Bag Suitcase, this session brings together lived experience, storytelling, and systems-level reflection to examine the long-term impact of foster care, trauma, displacement, and disconnection.

Shenandoah shares insights from her own experience in the foster care system and connects those experiences to the systems, practices, and relationships that shape outcomes for children, families, and communities. This session invites participants to look beyond individual stories and consider how organizations, courts, agencies, schools, and communities can create more human-centered systems of care.

This session is especially powerful for audiences working in child welfare, CASA/GAL, adoption, courts, education, human services, and community advocacy.

Best suited for CASA/GAL programs, child welfare professionals, foster care and adoption audiences, courts, schools, universities, nonprofits, advocacy organizations, and community events. Available as a keynote, author talk, plenary session, breakout, panel presentation, or professional development session. Preferred duration: 45–75 minutes. Can include book signing, moderated Q&A, or audience discussion if desired. Standard presentation setup requested; microphone preferred for larger rooms.